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The Bacchae and Other Plays

euripides john davie richard rutherford

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Euripides (c.484-406 B.C.) was the most controversial of the three great Greek tragedians and the most modern. His major themes- religious scepticism, the injustices suffered by women and the destructive folly of war-are issues still vitally important today.

360 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,-0414

This edition

Format
360 pages, Paperback
Published
July 25, 2006 by Penguin Classics
ISBN
9780140447262
ASIN
0140447261
Language
English

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euripides

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Euripides (Greek: Ευριπίδης) (ca. 480 BC–406 BC) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete (Rhesus is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.
Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. He also became "the most tragic of poets", focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was "the creator of ... that cage which is the theatre of William Shakespeare's Othello, Jean Racine's Phèdre, of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg," in which "imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates". But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.
His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism. Both were frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes. Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence. Ancient biographies hold that Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia, but recent scholarship casts doubt on these sources.

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Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
26(26%)
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100 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
RMB2
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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Some personal notes for each play, since Goodreads doesn't give me enough space under "Private notes". Definite Spoilers, if that matters for you here:



Ion
Nice play, with a happy ending. I liked it.

The Women of Troy
Well this was the complete opposite. It describes the fate of the various women of Troy. None of them is a good one.

Helen
So apparently the Helen in Troy was a hologram or a ghost or something. So they all killed each other over nothing. I guess this could be an allegory to the futility of war. Regardless, maybe my antipathy for Helen is too hardly engrained (or I'm on Team Troy) but I found myself not really rooting for her or Menelaus.

Bacchae
Man, these Gods are mean
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paulinasmiles
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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I've given up trying to figure out how to rate this. I'm torn because Bacchae is certainly five stars, but I am less sure of the other two plays. Here is my biggest issue: Herakles didn't grab me emotionally. I've seen bits of Women of Trachis performed and that dramatic presentation of Herakles' downfall was much more riveting. The action in Euripides' Herakles was less visceral and was too intellectual/philosophical perhaps? It seemed to me to lack immediacy.

Phoenician Women was a fun play (despite criticisms that it lacks a central plot and is a bit too scattered). I like this reimagining of the fall of the House of Laios. The tensions between Polynices and Eteocles is brutal and riveting. The fact that Jocasta is still alive to see the ruin of her two sons is also a dastardly touch. Still, I think the critics are right when they say that there is something off structurally about the play...

Bacchae is a masterpiece (maybe Euripides' most brilliant and brutal?). The mysterious element gives the play its enormous power. This play is the Dionysian in full force. Everything is up for question. What is human? What is divine? What happens when one becomes the other? The central tension of society and order vs. release and unity/annihilation is beautifully drawn. The long narrative accounts of the women masquerading in the forest are brilliant and beautiful (before straying into the horrifying). So much richness here.
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Superlazer
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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The Bacchae

- I have seen the holy Bacchae, who like a flight of spears
Went streaming bare-limbed, frantic, out of the city gate.

- What, woman? What was that you said? Do you exult
When such a cruel fate has overtaken the king?
- I am no Greek.
I sing my joy in a foreign tune.

- When bull led man to the ritual slaughter-ring.


He'd have been my god, were I Greek (or one of these foreign women). Even without him, I believe that his forces or his spheres, unacknowledged, are dangerous; whether religious or psychological, this play always spoke to me. Perhaps the part where Agave triumphs ignorantly with her son's head, is drawn-out, over-milked, but that's theatre for you. The effeminate foreigner who is Dionysus in disguise -- who celebrates that 'rare goddess', Peace; who cross-dresses the king to make a laughingstock of him; whose worshippers abandon the loom to tear wild beasts limb from limb... what's not to love and fascinate? So much, too, is uncannily familiar.

My personal no. 1 ancient Greek play.
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No-Life-101
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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This is a bit of a lie because I only actually read Bacchae, not the other plays. But Bacchae was excellent! Very crazy and party-filled.
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solidsnap
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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To be honest, the fact that any of ancient tragedies remain is astonishing. Included within this volume are 5 of Euripides later works, one of a spurious nature.

The Phoenician Women, Orestes, The Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulus clearly have common structure and style. Above all, Euripides works are iconic and distinctive in ending almost every time with a god character situated on a crane above the other actors, a deus ex machina. These plot resolving artifices allow for great dramatic leaps right until the end, when this device neatly explains away any loose-ends. Recently reading Medea, an early work of Euripides, the ending is similar. The deus ex machina is not really something used by Aeschylus or Sophocles, except perhaps in The Eumenides, though the actual “crane” or “machene” may not have been part of the stage structure yet. Aeschylus seems to have more commonly introduced gods into his works.

Rhesus is a fascinating work taking place within a Trojan camp. The fact that it covers a story within The Iliad that I cannot remember reading about from so many years ago felt nostalgic and was a great way to end this collection. Stories of Hector, Odysseus, Diomedes, Athena, and Rhesus were rather fun to revisit and has me contemplating a re-read of Homer soon.

This edition was fantastic in learning about Euripides and the annotations were a fun reading after the fact. However, the overall effect of the stories was not as great as The Oresteia or Sophocles amazing Oedipal Cycle. I love I think The Bacchae most of all as its focus on Dionysian rites around Thebes, my now favorite setting of all the ancient tragedies. I am a huge fan of this genre and think everyone everywhere should read these 31 or 32 monumental, intertextual works. They portray ideas of a reality that persists in literature of the western world since. The thematic structure allows a writer or their readers a means to understand the complex tensions, conflicts, and irresolvable situations that make up universal human difficulties.
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Grawe
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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Ion (3⭐️)
Started out strong, I was pleasantly surprised at the acknowledgement of rape victims and the things women go through, but it eventually went downhill and the ending left me feeling unsatisfied, it felt a little empty and superficial to me. Still enjoyable and has some memorable quotes.

The women of Troy (3.75⭐️)
Not gonna lie, this was kind of a drag at first, nothing happened but suffering and I was waiting for the plot to move along. But then came Cassandra, Andromache and Helen to give this play a bit more plot. And I liked that! Helen was surprisingly interesting to me, they make you hate her and then she defends herself and it’s like oooh maybe it wasn’t her fault but then they make you hate her again. Even if she’s a little evil I like her. But yeah it was very interesting and dark to see all the awful things this war left behind, especially from a woman’s pov. I just really like plot and it’s hard for me to read mostly plotless things.

Helen (3.5⭐️)
That was fun! There was a stark contrast between the previous play, which was a tragedy that didn’t have much plot, and this play, which was lighthearted and had more action going on. I enjoyed it as an easy read, though I gotta say I’m a tragedy girl through and through. The plot was a bit predictable but I liked that Helen was the one that made up the whole plan for them to escape. Evil Helen is still a fave though. The take on Helen actually being in Egypt during the war was interesting, at first I was like “Well but that means the war was literally for nothing” but maybe that was the point... war is for nothing. Overall, it was nothing too special but I liked it!

The Bacchae (4.5 or 5⭐️)
Finally reached the whole reason I bought this book for. And holy shit... that was creepy and I loved it! Dionysus is one of my favorite Greek Gods, so I was extremely excited to read this. First of all, I loved the Maenads and their rites, they sort of gave me midsommar/the witch vibes. It was all very connected to nature and very creepy at the same time. The opposition between being civilized versus letting go and dancing in the mountains in a sort of hedonistic fashion is something very captivating to me, and it’s one of the reasons I like Dionysus so much. Wish I were a woman in a frenzy, dancing in the wild and drinking wine. MY DREAM ! Also, the scene were the possessed Theban women tear Pentheus apart limb by limb was chilling. Anyways OOOOOF don’t offend Gods folks! Or more that that, I think this play might be a lesson about letting your natural, free side flourish and not stifling it with reason and civilization. Or something idk. Everyone go dance in the mountains and let go and once in a while.
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RemedyStar
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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My edition has four plays: Ion, The Women of Troy, Helen, and The Bacchae.

Ion -- The orphan Ion tries to discover his origins. The play begins with a prologue by Hermes, the messenger god, who arrives at the temple of Apollo at Delphi. He recounts the tale of how Creusa, the mother of Ion, was raped by Apollo and secretly gave birth to a son. She abandoned him and Apollo sent Hermes to bring the boy to Delphi. I thought this was not as interesting as the other three plays.

The Women of Troy -- The fates of Hecuba, Andromache, Cassandra and the other women of Troy after their city has been sacked, their husbands killed, and their remaining families about to be taken away as slaves. It takes place near the same time as Hecuba, which is not in this volume. I have read this one before in a newer translation. It is stunning.

Helen -- The play uses a variant of Helen's story that differs from the one in The Iliad: Helen of Sparta was in Egypt during the Trojan War while a phantom look-alike created by Hera and Hermes was carried off to Troy. (Herodotus, among others, had suggested that this is what really happened in his Histories.) Euripides has Helen taken to Egypt by the gods, and by the time the play opens, the real Helen has been living in Egypt for seventeen years. The Egyptian king Proteus, who had protected Helen, has died. His son Theoclymenus, intends to marry Helen, who after all these years remains loyal to her husband Menelaus.

The Bacchae -- One of the most disturbing Greek plays. This is probably my favorite play by Euripides. This is Euripides's last surviving tragedy. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BC. The play begins with the god Dionysus, the son of Zeus and Semele, announcing that he has arrived in Thebes to disprove the slander, spread by his mother's family, that Zeus is not his real father and that he is not a god. As the play opens, Dionysus has driven the women of Thebes into an ecstatic frenzy, and they have gathered on Mount Cithaeron to dance.
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